The following has been adapted from a series of speaker’s notes I’ve put together and delivered in various forms. It is not meant to be any form of expert view or academic piece, merely a collection of thoughts from my own experience which some have apparently found helpful.

Ordsall, in the late 1960’s during slum clearance (Manchester Evening News)

I’m a parish priest in the Anglican Church and I’m going to dive straight in with a story showing why, I believe, class is such an issue for us in terms of Church of England culture.

A couple of years ago I was in a women’s regional church leadership meeting. One of the female clergy there relayed the true account of a phone call she had recently received from a young woman who’d called her to ask if she could discuss a strong call to ordination she was feeling. When she…

Last year, we took members of several Poverty Truth Commissions to the Greenbelt festival for the first time. It was an exciting and inspiring experience – especially the opportunity for us to reflect together with Clare McBeath, our friend from the Centre for Theology and Justice. Clare collated and shared these theological reflections on the experience of being part of Poverty Truth Commissions.

At our National Poverty Consultation in November, Revd Deirdre Brower Latz was on our panel for a fascinating discussion about churches, poverty, and the idea of a ‘church of the poor’. We asked her to summarise some of what she said there.